Government should send “price signals” on energy?

Just in case voters didn’t figure out Barack Obama’s economic instincts towards statism, this interview from 2007 on energy policy should open a few eyes. During the Democratic primaries, Obama had a lot more openness about his desire for top-down control of the economy, especially when it came to energy. In order to change the behavior of consumers, Obama argued, the government had to send “price signals” to deter bad decisionmaking … at least according to the Bureau of Acceptable Consumer Choices:

Q: How do you convince people to change their lifestyles, to live differently, or to turn the question on its ear, are voters ahead of the politicians on this stuff? Do they get it, and maybe the politicians don’t?

A: Well, I think, uh, I think voters do understand it. I think it is important for us to send some price signals to change behavior.

Is that the function of government — to fix prices as a punitive measure to change consumer behavior? It will be in an Obama administration. He and a few elites will decide which consumer behaviors are bad, and penalize it with price signals. That usually means taxes or tariffs that drive the cost upwards. I’d guess that Obama isn’t celebrating the fact that a gallon of gasoline will likely fall below $2 per gallon sometime this week.

You all know I be liking Glenn Beck…..he had an interesting program on tonight..You just won’t believe it! Say it ain’t so…Not!

You are not going to believe this;There is drilling for oil finally going on. Guess what? It is China and India doing the drilling 50 miles from Key West! That’s what I said..Bunny Bread! You read it correctly. Yep, right off our Florida Coast..Whoo Hoo! They call it slant drilling…which means not only could they tap into the natural gas and oil into the Cuban outer Continental Shelf, but it would also allow them arguably to drill into our natural gas. They can take the oil from underneath us and, yet, we’re not doing a dadgum thing about it. This is — making me crazy! If you see a woman running up and down the street slightly disheveled and screaming bloody murder..well, you got the right one baby!

What’s amazing about this, too, is this is the same sort of technology they want to use in an war so they don’t stop. So, you obviously know they’re going to be disturbing the environment. In Anwar they can drill hole and drill all under the bottom there. Did you read that right? They will most likely disturb the environment..Yes, they are not concerned with their own nations environment when it comes to the economy and for sure their energy. Do you really think America that they are going to be concerned with ours?

Havana, Cuba) Cuba has 59 blocks of deep Gulf of Mexico waters claimed in an economic exclusion zone fronting the United States. Of the 59, 28 have been reserved for exploration by seven foreign companies.

The latest to join is the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras which signed the agreement with the Cuban state oil company CUPET on Friday.

The US Geological Survey estimated the North Cuba basin could contain 4.6 billion barrels of oil, with a high-end potential of 9.3 billion barrels, and close to 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

PDVSA of Venezuela is already a major partner of Cuba in oil, taking out blocks in the gulf and building and modernizing refineries. Others signing agreements include Spain’s Repsol-YPF, India’s ONGC and Nordsk Hydro, Vietnam state oil and gas group Petrovietnam, Malaysia’s state-run Petronas and Canada’s Sherritt International.

So, along with Venezuela, Spain, India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Canada, now Brazil will be drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Isn’t it odd that the only country that can’t drill in the Gulf of Mexico is the one which borders it on three sides?

This is absolutely incredible to me. Everyone I talked to this weekend, everyone I talked to said, I can’t do it anymore. I don’t know what — I mean, I don’t even know what to do. May I ask you a question, America? How are you doing it? How are you taking your kids to ballet, to karate, to, you know, Little League, to soccer? How are you running them to Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, to the church on Sunday, to school, back and forth? Most stay at home moms are not at home. They’re usually in the car shlepping the kids. How are you affording it anymore? Gas is going to be the top line expense with everyone.

I mean, food is not magically going up because of, you know, oh, gee, it’s hard to, you know, make a bagel now. Food is going up because of fuel.Fertilizer, fuel, delivery, ethanol, all of the things that Congress has done and do you know what I’ve been saying for awhile? this country is disenfranchised. The people in Congress are not listening to us. 13 percent approval rating of Congress. They’re not listening.

Are you with me yet that if we continue down this path, if we continue down this path of — they’re debating cap and trade. It’s going to cost $1.50 more per gallon. This is what they’re working on, cap and trade.

Now, it’s not going to pass this time around, but you watch because all three,all three presidential candidates are for cap and trade, which will add $1.50 per gallon for your gasoline. The EPA estimates it will take 1.1 to $2.8 trillion out of our GDP. 70 percent of our GDP is consumer spending. That means to take $2.8 trillion out of the GDP it means that you have $2.8 trillion or about, what, 70 percent of that, 1.5, $1.8 trillion less to spend. It means it stops you from spending because you don’t have any money left and this is what they’re doing. I’m telling you. Pitch forks are coming. The media doesn’t discuss the costs of these things. So, people ya need to let your reps know what you know and want or don’t want..a need to tell your neigbors, your family, your friends, if you want TRUE CHANGE..not the fancy rhetoric talk of politicians.

Do you know what? Before September 11th, when we were all fat and lazy and everybody was talking about technology and Glenn Beck said, I warn you, I warn you, what were the elements that I said? Do you recall at all? He told us all you have to do is create fear and hunger. Fear and hunger. We’ve got fear. The war is going. You’ve got fear. You’re creating hunger now. When you put hunger into this, because people are not afraid of what they cannot feel or see. Issues are important to us…just saying…I am thinking those two issues at top are going to take over…

But wait a minute. See, that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. People aren’t seeking out that information. They’re going to seek out the information about gas because it affects them. Food prices, it affects them. The media can say whatever you want, but when I say to you China is 50 miles off the coast of Florida building a platform right now along with India, building a platform that includes slant drilling, so it’s 50 miles off our shores, they’re taking the oil from Cuba’s property and they’re also slant drilling into our property or they have the capability of doing that and we are not drilling on our own property, people will say enough of it. OR they should say ENOUGH ALREADY!Everybody can drill offshore except the US..and they are coming here. Our country is rich in resources…we are tied up..we are not PC. We are spoilers. We have no sense to use our own resources and be energy independent and do it with style with the environment intact.. I don’t believe that..I think American ingenuity and innovation is there…it just has to be unleashed.

While Cap and trade is difficult to understand. Drilling for your own resources is not. The shale in Colorado is not. I mean, they are going up for the oil sands up in Canada. They’re doing it with the oil sands. They won’t let us take shale. Here’s what you need to know. In 2007 congressional democrats led an effort which became law to prevent the department of interior from enacting new rules for commercial oil shale leases until at least October 2008. The republicans in May this year tried to get around it saying, okay. Can we stop this? Let’s go after the shale. Well, they didn’t do it. They didn’t go after the shale. The democrats are still saying, no, no, no. The mountains are too important. Put the mountain back. Coast off of Florida and California, President Clinton, no, no, no. Cannot drill anything off our shores until 2012. Here is what’s at stake: The outer continental shelf moratorium, the at LAN tack ocean, the outer continental shelf moratorium, Pacific Ocean, outer continental shelf moratorium, Gulf of Mexico. And even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and the eastern gulf. We can’t even say can we look into it. Congress has said no. Then the Anwar. Back in 1995 President Clinton vetoed it. It is 700 miles away from a tree. 700 miles away from a tree. This is the point where my hair starts standing up doing its own dance..believe me, it is not a pretty sight.

Oil, when he vetoed this, was $19 a barrel. He said we didn’t need the oil that much. New technology was right around the corner and it would be until 2007 until we got the oil. So, it was going to take us way too long. Now oil is — let me see here — $125 a barrel, up from $19 a barrel. We would have been pumping that oil out now. They say, well, there’s not that much oil to get, yet. Here’s a solution in the paper: Try this solution. See if this doesn’t make your curly hair straight or vice versa! This is quite possibly my favorite solution. Ready? They don’t want to go into Anwar. No, that’s not go in Anwar. Let’s not go off of our own chest. Let’s let China do it but not us. Let’s not go in and take the shale in the mountains. Let’s go take coal. We’re three times the size of Saudi Arabia in coal to oil, three times. We’re going up to Canada and buying it from them, but we won’t do it ourself. Here’s a solution. Are you ready? Empty out the strategic petroleum reserves. Empty out the strategic oil reserves. It’s now holding 700 million barrels of oil. That’s nothing to sneeze at. We’re at war in the Middle East. Empty out the strategic oil reserve? Are we intentionally trying to destroy ourselves?

By the way, if you go to buy a new car, if you go to buy a new car, it’s going to cost you about $2,000 extra. Now, why? We’re having a hard time selling cars. Detroit is having problems. Why would cars go up $2,000 per vehicle? Because the trains are overloaded, because we can’t afford to ship products by air anymore, because the airlines are becoming obsolete, the airlines cost too much money to ship things. So, people think, well, I’ll just ship it by train. Well, now — the backlog on the trains in Chicago is so enormous, it’s costing $2,000 extra per car to get it onto a train.

By the way, the airlines, they announced last week, the people who sell the jet fuel to the airlines, the airlines are in such precarious positions for the first time ever, they’re being told, by the way, you have to pay cash for everything. They used to have a 20‑day turn around. They would give you the jet fuel and the airlines had 20 days to pay it off. That means the people who are selling the airlines’ fuel think they’re not good for 20 days. They want cash.

We are in a precarious situation and what is Congress doing today? Cap and trade? Something that — to protect the environment? Americans are angry! Congress should start getting concerned. I’m telling you, I don’t know how much carbon torches give off, but the environment is going to weep one of these days because I think Americans are going to light torches and grab pitch forks and head to Washington and tell these clowns, get the h*ll out! But maybe it’s just me. What do I know?

We are all concerned about higher gas prices…can you imagine making 10-15 dollars an hour and having to commute 40 miles to your job one way? We are not talking Europe here where they have transportation rails and buses in their areas. Yeah maybe in New York, and large cities..but meanwhile what about the heartland?

.Our country was built on pretty cheap oil and we are spread out, sprawling suburbia, rural and long commutes..

You cannot possibly compare our gas prices to Europes. This should have been taken care of a long time ago..in the 70’s to be exact. Now we have all the environmentalists and greenies and our Government choking us as far as drilling goes..

So now we have the presidential candidates running around telling voters that they will help solve high gas prices. Well, if you believe that, you’ll believe that Hugo Chavez drives a Yugo. It’s just bull.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are calling for “investigations” into “price gouging” by American oil companies. Good. There’s plenty of price manipulation going on and, under Presidents Bush and Clinton, little federal oversight. If a big oil company wants to tighten supply, for example, it’s a snap. Just slow down the refinery process by ordering some extra “maintenance” or something.

But who is going to investigate Senators Obama and Clinton over their opposition to oil drilling? The Democratic Party has consistently opposed new drilling, and nuclear energy as well. Even the dedicated liberal governments in France and Sweden bought into nuclear.But not the American left, no way.

We have oil in Alaska, the East Coast, The Gulf Coast that we are not drilling…a big ha ha from other countries ..don’t think for a minute Russia or China or Europe would not be using their own resources.

The price of gasoline is not set by Big Oil. It is set by futures exchanges around the world and is a direct result of supply and demand. As the world’s demand for gasoline has increased, it has all but exhausted the world’s surplus production capacity. No new refineries have been built in the U.S. since 1976. That is really looking out for us here at home…don’t ya think?

Governments own three-quarters of the world’s known reserves. Flush with oil revenue, these countries have little incentive to expand their production.

The U.S. is the third-largest oil producer. However, our government has restricted the supply of oil in the ground by putting more and more ofour known reserves off limits, specifically parts of Alaska, the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, Exxon – the top U.S. company – is ranked only 14th in the world in terms of oil reserves.In addition, our government has made it more difficult to build and refine oil into gasoline.

Yes we need to conserve, yes we need to be innovative like Americans have always been..Do we really need to be using our food sources? We are paying a high price for that now and I am afraid it will be higher in the future..shortages are already hurting people and it’s coming to America and I’m not talking Neil Diamonds song.

On the Republican side, President Bush has done absolutely nothing about rising gas prices, which is part of the reason is approval rating is approaching 20%. He blames the Democrats. Fine. But the President should be telling all Americans to cut back their gas consumption just a little. He should be urging us to use less gas. That would at least cut into foreign oil’s record profit margins.

Senator John McCain proposes a gas tax “holiday” this summer. True, that would save the folks a few bucks, but it would also add to the massive spending deficit. McCain is not going to rock the boat to make us ‘independent’ either. The government better start balancing the budget soon before Häagen-Dazs becomes more valuable than the U.S. currency.

The sad truth is that both political parties have sold out the folks. For decades, economists knew China and India were industrializing and those countries would demand much greater amounts of oil. Everybody knew that OPEC could slow down production and gouge the world if it could and, of course, now it can.

But if Americans would get angry and begin punishing the foreign oil bandits conserve, Use as much of our own resources as possible..then prices would drop. However, we are often a selfish people. We want those gas-guzzling Hummers and SUVs, and we’re paying a big price for that above and beyond the sticker.

We can buy less gas, urging folks to conserve energy in creative ways without falling into the Gore and his bunch green crap. We can be innovative..We can drill where we have not..We can build cars that get a lot of mileage..and they don’t have to be so little that we can barely get in and out..why not? We are the ones who got to the moon first! Are there now so many regulations that it does not pay to invent? What in the World has happened to America? Don’t answer…we already know..we are captives to globilazation, political correctness, just look at how we cannot say Jihad, thanks to Connie Rice…thats just for starters and leaders in both parties that pander to the vote now and in the future…They are not the ones that are going to have their way of life changed here…need I remind you?

Instead They will create peer pressure against the guzzle crowd. They will use your children, guilt trip coming America..this oil stuff is all our fault..let’s just suck it up, conserve ..turn that heat down or off..air conditioning…who needs it? just open the windows.buy different light bulbs…of course, do you really think the carbon credit folks will be uncomfortable? Don’t bet on it..once in a while to look good they will pay some carbon credits.. Just watch the commercials Al Gore is bringing to us in prime time next season for the grand sum of 300 million.

I am all for profit and big profits, that is why most people work..to better their lives..however there is a fine line between profits making good money and extreme greed. Without profits there would be no jobs…of course, many of our jobs that make a living wage have gone overseas for cheap labor and that supports those countries.

To be fair,Profits reflect the size of an industry, and the oil industry is HUGE! From 2003 to 2007, average earnings for the oil and natural gas industry were approximately 8.1 cents for every dollar of sales, which was only a penny above the average of all U.S. manufacturing industries.

In fact, in 2007, the oil and natural gas industry earned 8.3 cents for every dollar of sales compared to 7.3 cents for all U.S. manufacturing. When you take out the financially challenged auto industry, U.S. manufacturing came out slightly ahead of oil and gas, earning 8.9 cents for every dollar of sales.

the oil companies aren’t owned by a few high rollers. Only 1.5 percent of industry shares are owned by company executives. The rest is owned by people like you and me. If you have a mutual fund or IRA, there is a good chance you own a piece of the oil industry you are looking to vilify.

Oddly enough, our oil and gas companies pay more in taxes, as a percentage of their income, than our manufacturing companies. In 2006, the oil and gas companies’ income tax expenses averaged 40.7 percent, compared to 22.1 percent for U.S. manufacturing companies.

The oil industry is capital intensive, and necessity dictates that the lion’s share of a company’s earnings must be reinvested. These costs remain high in boom periods, like the one the industry is now experiencing, as well as bust periods, like the one that occurred in the 1990s.

Also, it is important to remember that companies do not pay taxes, individuals do. Taxes must be passed along to consumers as part of the cost of doing business. Real people always will (always have) pay the cost of higher taxes. Let consumers – and voters – beware!

When politicians talk about putting a new tax on the oil companies, hold on to your wallets.

Big Oil makes its money by pumping oil out of the ground, not refining and selling it as gasoline. Only a tiny fraction of Exxon’s $36 billion profit last year came from making and selling gas in the U.S.

We need leadership on this energy business, or it is going to cripple our economy. Our energy incompetence has already empowered our enemies. Let’s think for once of the welfare of this country…Be outraged that we are not using our own Resources here in America, Let’s not depend on foreign oil..What is that old saying? Charity begins at home…Let’s use Alaska,the pacific, the Atlantic and the Gulf coasts..let’s stop being silly and destroying ourselves in the process. Enough already!

So let’s get ticked out here. We the people can do this. Big oil AND the Government nor the candidates are looking out for us. Let’s stop rewarding pretending they do.

McCain finally said he would enforce the border security…after much yelling by ‘we the people’..he is not going to change his stance at the present time on what happens to the ‘guest worker program’ pathway to citizenship’ or much else…including drilling….so it is time we make a whole lot more noise….lots of it..if we don’t..if we remain apathetic and lethargic on this…forget this country as you have known it..it won’t be recognizable in just a few short years…a very few short years…It is time to wake up America! Stand up as a people and bombard your reps with calls, letters and faxes…do it again and again until they have to hear you…let them know we are sick and tired of being sick and tired!

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As if a housing crisis, rising energy costs and a soft labor market weren’t enough to cause economic anxiety for the average American, now consumers are feeling the pinch of rapidly escalating food costs. The United States has long prided itself in being the breadbasket of the world, and Americans have traditionally paid a smaller share of their income on food than citizens of other developed countries. But the days of cheap milk, bread, beef and poultry may well be over — and Uncle Sam is partly to blame.In 2007, the cost of a gallon of milk increased 26 percent; eggs went up 40 percent; and a loaf of white bread went from $1.05 to $1.28 from 2006 to 2008. Steep increases in the price of oil have contributed to these higher costs, but the federal government has played a pernicious role as well. By mandating that oil companies increase the amount of ethanol they blend with gasoline, the government has not only artificially increased the cost of corn, which is what most U.S. ethanol is made of, but has driven up the cost of other grains as well

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Inflated corn prices encourage farmers to divert more acreage to corn, which means they plant less soy and wheat, which, in turn, drives the prices of those commodities up as well. The aggregate price of wheat, corn, soy oil and soy meal in the U.S. will be $61.7 billion higher in the 2007/2008 crop year than it was in 2005/2006.

Corn prices affect a host of other food prices as well. If you’ve ever looked at the ingredient labels on everything from bologna to canned tomato soup, you’ll see that corn syrup is a common ingredient of many processed foods. Corn is also a common grain used in feed for cattle, poultry and hogs. As a result, prices for meat and poultry are going up, but even with higher prices, some companies in the meat industry still can’t make a profit, and many are being forced to cut jobs and close plants. I’ve seen this firsthand as a member of the board of directors of Pilgrim’s Pride, the nation’s largest chicken producer, where we have already had to shut down one plant and close six distribution centers to cope with record losses directly attributable to soaring feed costs.